So I have been draaaaagin my feet about adding a new post long enough. Obviously I am not a blog a day person. Rather I'm turning into a blog a month. Oops. Well I have much to show the world at the moment, I just need to get off my butt and do it. So here is my first tid bit. It's not from
Art and Soul per say, but it is because of the retreat. You were sent a blank fish if you signed up for X number of classes I think. Due to the fact that Erin and I tend to sign up for every class we can get our paint stained, chemical soaked hands on we both received a fish. I would encourage you to go over to
her blog and take a look at what she did as i think it out shines mine.
At any rate, this is my fish. Erin gave me the idea for the pennies and at the last second I finally came up with the idea for the copper wiring. So I stripped about 21ft worth of car stereo wire and there you have it. My idea was for a beta fish look, but I think it looks more like an ornate goldfish. You can call it
Penney. ;)
I love smacking metal with a hammer. There is something satisfying about wacking a hammer down onto something in the means to create, not destroy. This is good. I suppose my love of hammering metal showed itself in my teens when I took a deep interest in how swords were made. I never had the pleasure of hand forging a sword the old fashioned way. Now most are made by machines or cut from pre-forged metal and ground into shape. Boooring... :P I guess thats something I need to change in my life. I want to make a sword from scratch. Learn it properly. However, I digress... This pendant was created in Susan Lenart-Kazmers class Creating Containers & Bezels--Cold Join. I love Susans classes because it's really about puzzle solving. Not the finish line. You can chose your own level. Good stuff there. So I officaly name this piece "The Grinder". It's didn't start that way. It was like many a heavy metal song. Starts with a beautiful thought and digresses into crunchy, grindy, chewy bits. Just the way I like it. My challenges for this project were as follows. 1. connecting the gears on the back without drawing a bead. For one, drawing a bead next to a big aluminium gear would have just sucked. It would have sucked up the heat and.....ten years later you still have the tip of a wire. The next part is that you have a tiny round bit resting aganst your chest like a ball point pen pointed at your heat. Comfy yet? Ok not so much. So I managed to get an anvil in there and make a rivet on the back. Would have been far easier at home with it clammped
into a vice but hey. It worked. The next problem was drawing a bead on the left side of the wire that holds everything together. I watched my gears on the side turn cherry red and start to wilt like a flower on fast worward. Heh....not the desired effect. Any who, I'm very happy with this project except that I have to make a proper chain for it. I like the surprise of looking down into it to see something more.
